Pilot 1: Maine Food Donation Kit

Goals 

To help Maine businesses, organizations, and individuals understand WHY and HOW to donate food instead of throwing it away.

Methodology 

  1. With so much untapped food donation potential in Maine grocery store chains, we originally wanted to work with them to increase food donations throughout the state.
  2. However, there was a lot of reluctance on their end, as they feared running into legal or financial issues along the way.
  3. These misconceptions made us realize that we had to create a tool that would enable food donors to be able to easily donate food and see the rationale for why (tax deduction and legal aid).
  4. To do this, our student intern worked with both the state of Maine and Harvard Food Law and Policy. We also worked with Good Shepherd and used a little bit of their food donation model in our toolkit.

Results 

After compiling all of our food donation information, these resources were packaged into the toolkit that we have available on our website (see below).

Resources 

  1. Food Donation Toolkit
  2. Food Donation Toolkit Presentation

image of student intern doing a food rescue